Round Barrow(s)

Fieldnotes

Visited July 2014

This is a classic drive-by TMA site. Again, the site has not been documented as being a Bronze Age bowl barrow as it appears to never have been excavated. Whatever it is, it is strange. I defiantly got a vibe of "who are you?" when I started walking on top of it. This mound is right next to a gate into an arable field and could just be a pile of soil but why would anyone leave it positioned where it is such an obstacle? I took a few pictures as I moved around it and it looks like a round barrow that has been added to. From some angles it is a convincing bowl barrow, but the side nearest the road and gate look like they have been a later addition. The top of the mound has been elongated and is now flat. There looked like a hollow to the south west where soil had been scoped out of the field, maybe to add to the mound. I could feel a slight ditch under my feet on the north and east sections but nothing on the west or south, nearest the road.

Pastscape seem undecided as to it being a windmill mound but there seem to be better locations to build a windmill further up the hill. The road next to the barrow is classified as Roman and links to the Watling Street. This road is defiantly ancient and judging by the about of small ponds either side of it, was a drovers road or some form of animal rearing area. Whether this was pre or post medieval is debatable.

There are/where several barrows close to this site. As these were dug into at a time when scientific investigation techniques where undefined, the results from such digs are inconclusive. Some sites appear to have been reused in the pagan Saxon period, while others have simply been classified a Saxon in origin. There is clear evidence that the area was cultivated or used during the Neolithic, so this could easily be a Bronze Age bowl barrow built by the proceeding generations. Once again, modern excavation is required to answer the questions posed by sites like this, and as that is money driven, we will probably never find out.

Fenny Drayton church is worth visiting and the village, then known as Drayton-in-the-Clay, was also the birth place of George Fox, founder of the Quakers, so, uh ...... hats off to him, "Thou seest how young people go together into vanity, and old people into the earth; thou must forsake all, young and old, keep out of all, and be as a stranger unto all."